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Comment by pengaru | Hacker News Reader

MS Windows is the daytime television of operating systems:

If you're still using it in 2023 you have only yourself to blame. It's not like there aren't better options at your disposal...

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If you want first-class Office interop, or require industry-specific tools, you're on Windows. Next closest is Mac, and that's not a substitute for a PC for a vast number of people (not least because they're so expensive.)

Edit: When I started writing the response, parent had no replies. I didn't mean to dogpile.

I tried to use Linux on my desktop for a year but ended up switching back to Windows for various reasons:

- Work apps that weren't compatible

- Awful screen tearing issues

- Bluetooth dropping out (mouse) and glitching (audio) all the time

- Games didn't work (and you can't screenshare with audio on Linux in Discord)

I'm sure I could have fixed these but after getting to the third page of Google looking how to solve a problem it was just easier to go back to Windows which I've (touch wood) never had stability problems with, it just works. I've never had it automatically update in the middle of the day, install apps that I didn't want by itself or delete any of my files.

It's truly incredible how we as humans can exist in the same world but have entirely different experiences. I never had the issues you listed in Linux, and my experience has been mostly stable (not saying no bugs, all software has bugs in 2023). But, oh my god, the few times I used Windows, I was continuously tortured by the unbelievable instability. On my Thinkpad X1 Carbon, Windows still displays the wrong time with Google searches leading to no solution. I used Windows for very specific reasons and I was hit with "hooly crap never fucking again". Now, if I need to use a program that doesn't work in WINE, I just explain to the person "I'm unable to do that because I have no interest in working with Windows". Recently, the US tax CPA I'm working with asked me to use a program to sign something that only works in Windows. After telling that, they insisted I must otherwise they can't file my taxes, so I had to say "no, I'm unable to use Windows, I have no access to it", so they found another way to do it.

It boggles my mind how someone can have the opposite experience.

>On my Thinkpad X1 Carbon, Windows still displays the wrong time with Google searches leading to no solution.

Were you dual booting Windows and Linux?

Linux assumes and sets the system clock to UTC, while Windows assumes and sets the system clock to local timezone. This quite often leads to one of the two incorrectly determining the time because of an incorrect assumption.

As for my personal experience, Linux is cursed. The thing breaks down if I so much as look at it weird; I don't trust anything mission critical to it anymore.

Windows, besides being practical and versatile and customizable, has been a paragon of reliability for me. Even Windows ME performed admirably for me way back in the day; no, I'm not joking.

Windows 11 feels like Linux from 90s. Right, with screen tearing and glitching audio on headphones disconnect.

Not many people use this excuse, but I'm honestly too old to give a shit about any other OS. lol I'm gonna die using windows and that's alright.

> Not many people use this excuse, but I'm honestly too old to give a shit about any other OS. lol I'm gonna die using windows and that's alright.

It's actually ^this^ perspective that most fits the "daytime television" analogy. The old fogies have precisely that attitude, and they're primarily who still watch daytime TV.

Now that most of the population aims their eyeballs at something other than TV, TV has become a wasteland of geriatric-targeted ads/political propaganda (old people vote) with a pittance of content mixed in. It's being stripped clean of what flesh remains, in its final death throes until its remaining viewers completely die off.

MS Windows is on the same trajectory, which started with MS failing to get Windows on smartphones. Now that so many grow up using non-Windows mobile devices instead of home PCs, Windows will only become increasingly desperate, dated, and tasteless in its revenue/power-generating schemes.

Hopefully FLOSS can prove more robust against this cycle... It's not like we don't see similar patterns emerging with Mozilla embedding ads/"suggestions" in Firefox tabs, or Canonical putting ads in Ubuntu. But at least there will always be alternatives thanks to the ability to fork and compete when the source is available.

Maybe for individual/home/personal use but Microsoft rules the enterprise. It is easier to find IT admins who can manage a fleet of Windows boxes than MacOS/Linux. There is also a whole ecosystem around the use of MS Office tools.

The sunken cost fallacy applies IMHO, but too many corporate IT managers just assume Windows systems and Windows AD is the the only way to manage a large set of corporate users.

> Windows AD is the the only way to manage a large set of corporate users.

What do you recommend? I wouldn't try to manage an org of over 1k people without AD, it's just a nightmare.

I just want an OS where; out of the box, I can play any game made in the last 20 years, change my mouse scroll speed, or set my background to a solid color.

I don't think any OS comes with all games made the last 20 years out of the box. Nor one which supports any game made the last 20 years.

But yeah, mouse scroll speed is an excellent example of the harm GNOME does to GNU/Linux adoption.

You can do all of those in Linux. For example, here's how to set the background to a solid color. Open a terminal and type the following four commands:

    gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-options 'none'
    gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background primary-color '#004000'
    gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background secondary-color '#306030'
    gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background color-shading-type 'vertical'

Source: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1272120/ubuntu-20-04-change-...

Hilarious how the first Linux user's response to a Windows user's unease is immediately "open the terminal"

As long as that's how it goes, it will never be the Year of the Linux Desktop.

Exactly. Where everything I need to do requires a cryptic command to pull off. What args do I need? Where? Oh shit a capital letter. Try again. I don't want to have to Google everything I need to do. Maybe voice enabled GPT-4 will help.

Typing (or pasting) a command into a terminal will always be more reproduceable than anything GUI.

Sure, and I'm personally fine with it. I'm one of those kooks at work who requested a Linux workstation, much to the chagrin of the IT department.

But as long as there is a conversation between Windows and Linux that includes using the terminal, you've lost the "normie" segment of the population, which is going to preclude most people from even considering it.

This fact is invariably met with much wailing and gnashing of teeth by Linux bros who think that there's no problem at all with it.

And we're fine with it.

They can suffer Windows or MacOS, it means nothing to me.

I'm not entirely fine with it, because I suspect Valve will only continue investing in Linux gaming if there's a potential market for it.

I doubt this "potential market" is going to shrink, relative to when Valve started investing in Open Source operating systems.

I did this on Windows too. Why even bother giving someone "click here then here the look for this menu on the right" when I can just send them a PowerShell script.

The issue is discoverability.

The terminal does not tend to be hard to discover on Linux.

It is right there ready to use.

I'm not sure if this is satire or not.

You can do it in the dconf editor UI but showing the commands is way easier.

this is hilarious.

"It's not like there aren't better options at your disposal"

For what exactly? For many, many things, windows is your ONLY option. Switching to Linux or Apple would mean kissing away so much software availability.

If you can't you can't but once you're over the hurdle it's bliss.

Or you need a niche application that's only available on Windows, or you don't want to rebuy it or a near equivalent for the Mac.

Or don't want to buy a Mac when you already have a perfectly serviceable PC.

Also a good point. My family desktop isn't quite grandfather's axe but it would be wasteful to just dump it, and if I convert it to Linux some of the games my wife and kids want to play can't follow.

It runs PC games better than anything else.

I would love to be running Mac or Linux, but the accessibility story for both of those is pretty dire. I have to have voice/eye tracker input, Dragon only works on Windows, and the other options are hobbyist quality at best.

There are many that don't have control over what operating system they use.

In a lot of industries, there really aren't, unfortunately. Sure, there are other options in some cases, but they come at the expense of productivity, so they're not really better.

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